Who Has To Be Traded

Team: 2022-23 Boston Bruins

Initial Creation Date: Oct. 18, 2022

Published: Oct. 18, 2022

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

McAvoy will be back before you know it and the Bruins will need to balance the books if no one else is arbitration eligible. The team more or less showed their hand when they placed Foligno and Reilly on waivers before the season. Unfortunately, simply burying both and demoting the waiver-exempt Lauko doesn't get the B's under the cap. They would still be over by $591,667 with a full 23-man roster of players who would require waivers to go down. The only option will be a trade. Wagner's buried penalty is not enough to erase the overage and trading someone on the roster with a small cap hit won't do much when their roster spot will still need to be replaced. Someone with a considerable cap needs to go and all signs point to Reilly or Foligno. Of course, these are two very different situations. Even though Foligno has looked alright so far and is on an expiring contract, his cap number and his stats from last year mean no one will give up anything of value for him and the Bs may even need to add value to get a deal done. If they're lucky, they send Foligno down to Providence and he asks for a contract termination - problem solved. Otherwise, it is probably Reilly getting dealt, which also explains his usage so far, especially in the offensive zone. If the Bs can boost Reilly's value, they can probably get a decent return from a Western Conference contender in need of defensive depth. Reilly off the books creates the space the Bruins need and then some, opening up enough space that once accrued by the deadline could allow for a decent trade acquisition down the road (if need be). With McAvoy, Lindholm, Grz, Carlo, Forbort, Zboril, Clifton, Stralman, Renouf, Carrick, and Ahcan, the blue line depth would still be fine to survive some injuries without Reilly.